This blog is dedicated to publishing information that is relevant to sex health and HIV/AIDS. Many have a misunderstanding of many different aspects of the disease including, transmission and prevention.

For years and years, the health professions have been expanding their job market by creating new jobs and opportunities for professionals to take part in. Sexual health is one sector of the health professions and includes a wide range of different types of jobs including gynecology, and a planned parenthood professional. Not only has sexual health opened an abundance of jobs, but it has boosted the economy by offering their relatively cheap services for the public to use.

The medical profession continues to have job opportunities becoming readily available at an insane rate to allow for the influx of people wanting to go into this profession. “Not only is it the top-paying job in the U.S., employment for medical doctors is projected to grow 14 percent from 2014 to 2024, twice as fast as the average for all other occupations” (Ward). Planned parenthood, a branch of sex ed, brings in an annual amount of $229.9 million. Although it sounds like a lot of money and a very successful business, not every patient pays for their preventative care from a planned parenthood center. Mariam Berg, a writer for Planned Parenthood Action Fund writes, “At least 60% of all Planned Parenthood patients rely on public health programs like Medicaid and Title X for their preventative and primary care.” This only becomes a problem when people like Trump are in power and maintain the ability to defund organizations. If Planned Parenthood were to be defunded, patients who rely on public health programs will be blocked from receiving their care. Of the 4 million people that reply on public health programs to receive their care, over 1.5 million are patients of preventative care that is offered by these organizations. If anyone were to be successful at defunding Planned Parenthood, the Congressional Budget Office predicts that taxpayers would have to pay over $130 million over 10 years and even though cheaper alternative birth controls are readily available, they are not as effective in preventing pregnancy as other types that are distributed through an organization. Although many people would like to see the defunding of Planned Parenthood, most of them do not know that taxpayers would have to pay the difference in funding.

Not only does it open a job market, Planned Parenthood and sex education has had an effect on the societal norms and our country’s success. Without the combination of sex education in middle school and the establishments of Planned Parenthood centers, our society would be unable to evolve. Prior to the 1960’s when birth control was made federally legal, there were no predetermined, widely accepted methods. It was not until the 1930’s that the latex condom, the first preventative invention was introduced to our society. Even though it was available before the 1900’s, it wasn’t until the turn of the century that “white women, [started] showing their ability to cut their fertility in half, [and] averaged 3.56 children” (Roy). Although birth control was still not popular at the turn of the century, men would use “coitus interruptus” and pull out before ejaculation. Today, we know that this essentially does nothing. There is no protection from STI’s and there’s still the high chance of becoming pregnant. During the same time, women were still being taught the “roles of a women” by teaching home economics in schools. Women were meant to stay at home, take care of the children, and provide a nice environment for the man to live in. Unlike today in American colleges, women have become the majority of college attendees, obtaining masters and bachelor degrees so they can enter the workforce as mentally prepared as any other man. This advancement in gender equality is partly due to the increase in popularity of birth control. Instead of getting pregnant, having many kids, and staying home to take care of the household, women are out getting an education and higher paying, executive jobs. “Among Fortune 500 companies, women make up about 15% of female executive officers- members of the senior leadership team” (Swanson). The advancements and establishments of Planned Parenthood centers has allowed our society to evolve and change over time, leading to a women-heavy higher education system, and a higher percentage of Fortune 500 owners.

The abundance of jobs and opportunities that are offered in the health profession allows there to be constant medical advancements that have a direct benefit on our society. Without birth control, women would be having an abundance of children leading to a retrograde in our country.

Every middle schooler will always remember the day they watched a video of a woman giving birth. At the time, most thought it was disgusting and did not see the point, other than to expose them to the subject, to show a video like that to a class full of 12 year olds. Although it is seen as a menial course often offered by their school, the lack of sex education has proven to be detrimental and would result in more than just unwanted teen pregnancies.

Since the 1980’s when gay pride first started to become more popular in major cities, HIV/AIDS slowly started making its way through the gay community. “The disease spread like wildfire; from New York, to San Francisco, and Los Angeles, more and more gays started coming in with symptoms that uncannily matched those of ‘the gay disease’” (Shilts). The doctors were unable to detect a definitive cause for the sickness, but realized that it was being transmitted through sexual acts, so they told their patients to stop having sex. Rightfully, the community did not like this statement because medical institutions do not have the right to declare who and who is not allowed to have sexual relations. The lack of sex education 37 years ago led to the nationwide belief that the homosexuals were dirty because they had a disease that started in their community and led to a worldwide deadly disease.

Today, “sex education has increased the use of condoms and contraception by 40%” (Serenko). Having the knowledge about safe sex and the consequences of unsafe sex allows those who take part in sexual actions to have the knowledge to prevent such consequences. Over half of the United States do not require sex education to be taught in schools, and in an article on fox news published by Lacie Glover states the 10 best and worst states for STD’s based on CDC data on chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis. Of the 10 that were listed on the worst places, 9 of the states were also ones that do not require sex education to be a part of the school system. Not only did they have high STD rates in their state, 2/3 of those states are also ranked top 10 states with highest teen pregnancy.

Teaching sexual health in school allows there to be a gender-inclusive curriculum that informs everyone about the basics of both genders. Without being informed on sex education, people become ignorant and start being unsafe, whether they consciously know what they are doing could have harmful side effects later. Sex education does not require a masters degree to teach preteens about the correct use and different types of contraceptives, it just requires a teacher that is willing to talk to their students about sex. Not only does sex education does promote safe sex, it also “helps teenagers understand themselves biologically and prepare to face the world so that they do not fall victim to sexual predators” (Serenko).

With Donald Trump and Mike Pence in office, the teachings of sex health in schools could easily be compromised. Although he does not have the power to get rid of sex health, he is able to determine how much funding public programs receive. Both Clinton and Bush allocated their funds to abstinence-only-until-marriage programs and compared “having sex outside of marriage to starting a fire in the middle of your living room instead of the fireplace” (Kempner). This put a bad connotation on sex outside of marriage and made it seem like sex with another partner a deadly act. The past eight years under the Obama administration, more funding was allocated towards evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention programs. Sex education has allowed for kids to engage in safe sex and keep themselves and others safe. Without teaching important health lessons, we could easily have another unknown, deadly, STD outbreak.